45 Amazing and Interesting Facts about Muscles | Amazing Facts 4U
- Muscle is a soft tissue in the body of humans and animals. The function of muscles is to produce force and motion.
- Muscles are responsible for maintaining posture, physical movement, and also the movement of internal organs e.g. Pumping of the heart, movement of intestines, etc.
- Your brain controls your body movements by sending messages to the muscles via nerves. Nerves are attached to the spinal cord which is connected to the brain. Without muscles, your body would not be able to do anything.
- The word muscle is derived from the Latin term musculus, meaning “little mouse”.
- There are around 650 skeletal muscles in the human body. Amazingly if all the muscles of the body come together to pull in the same direction, you could actually lift over twenty tons.
- Some of the biggest muscles are in the back, near the spine. They are responsible for keeping the body upright and gives the body the power it needs to lift and push things.
- The foot has about 25% of all the human body’s muscles
- Humans are born with all the muscle fibers they will ever have. New muscle fibers are not produced. The difference between us and champion bodybuilders is in the thickness of muscle fibers.
- There are 3 types of muscles namely skeletal, cardiac, and smooth.
- Skeletal muscles (or striated) are voluntary muscles that are responsible for all our actions done intentionally. Tendons attach the muscle to two bones across a joint, as one muscle contracts the other relaxes which moves the bones.
- The name striated (means striped) comes from the light and dark parts of the muscle fibers as seen under the microscope making them look striped.
- Skeletal muscle can be further divided into two types, slow twitch, and fast-twitch.
- Slow twitch (Type I) muscle contains proteins that give it a rich red color due to high myoglobin (Oxygen carrying protein). This muscle can carry more oxygen efficiently. These muscles can contract over a long period of time useful for aerobic sports such as long-distance running and cycling.
- Fast twitch (Type II) muscle is whiter in color as it has less myoglobin. Fast-twitch fibers contract quickly and powerfully but fatigue rapidly. These muscles are useful for anaerobic exercise such as sprinting or weightlifting.
- Cardiac muscle is an involuntary muscle found only in the heart and is responsible for keeping the heart pumping 24/7. It is the muscle that does the most work of any muscle over a lifetime.
- The amazing fact is that over a lifetime, you pump enough blood to fill 13 oil supertankers. In fact, the average heart beats two billion, six hundred million times during a lifetime.
- Amazingly the only muscle that never tires is a cardiac muscle in your heart. This is due to the mechanism providing relaxation in between the beats.
- Smooth muscles (or visceral) carry out involuntary actions not under our control. These are found on the walls digestive tract, bladder, blood vessels, uterus, etc.
- Muscle makes up about 50% of the total human body weight. Muscle tissue is also about 15% denser than fat tissue.
- Typically, when people start to work out, they lose weight at the beginning by losing fat, but then start to gain weight due to muscle development.
- In fact, it takes half as long to gain muscle as it does to lose it. Thus if it takes you a month to develop a muscle, it will take two months for that muscle to degenerate back to its original size/strength.
- We don’t hear our muscles moving because the sound frequency is lower than 20 Hz, which we can’t hear.
- The amazing fact is that muscles cannot push. They can only pull. When you are actually “pushing,”, it’s actually because another muscle is pulling. When your push something with your arms, it’s actually your muscles in the back of your arm pulling the elbow.
- Each human finger is constructed of ligaments, tendons, and three bones. Amazingly there are no muscles in the fingers. Fingers move by the pull of forearm muscles on the tendons inserted into finger bones.
- Amazingly to take one step, you use 200 muscles. Walking in fact exercises a lot of body muscles.
- When you’re cold, your muscles contract involuntarily. This is the mechanism to send out energy that warms up your body. In fact, your muscles create at least 85% of your total body heat.
- We actually need 72 muscles to speak.
- Amazingly it takes 17 muscles in the face for us to smile and 43 muscles to frown. However only 12 facial muscles make a significant contribution to smiling, and only 11 make a significant contribution to frowning.
- it is hard to determine which muscle is in fact the strongest. In terms of size, the gluteus maximus in the buttocks is the largest muscle in the body. The calf muscle uses the most force when used, and the jaw muscle (called masseter) exerts the most pressure (80 times its weight).
- If you consider muscle relative to the function, the strongest muscles in the body are the external muscles of the eye which are about 100 times stronger than they need to be in relation to the eyeball size.
- Scientists estimate that your eye muscles move over 100,000 times a day!
- The stapedius in the ear is the smallest skeletal muscle in the human body. It dampens the vibrations of the stapes by pulling on the neck of that bone. This helps to control the amplitude of sound waves from external stimuli. This protects the inner ear from high noise levels.
- The muscle that lets your eye blink is the fastest muscle in your body allowing you to blink up to 5 times a second.
- The tensor tympani is a muscle within the ear contained in the bony canal above the osseous portion of the auditory tube and is inserted by a slender tendon into the neck of the malleus bone. Its role is to reduce the amplitude of sounds such as those produced from chewing.
- Muscle named Palmaris longus is a visible tendon in the midline of the anterior wrist. The muscle is absent in about 14 percent of the population. It is commonly used as a replacement for other tendons in case of injury.
- The longest muscle in the human body is the sartorius found in the thigh It measures 12 inches in an adult.
- Amazingly there are more than 40 muscles in the face, without which we could not eat, speak, communicate, express feelings or kiss!
- The hypnic jerk, or the twitching of the limbs that accompanies a falling sensation while sleeping, is caused by the brain’s misinterpreting relaxed muscles as falling. The brain then sends signals to arm and leg muscles in an attempt to regain balance.
- When people are electrocuted, sudden and violent contraction of all the muscles of the body occurs as a result of the electrical charge flowing through the body.
- The tongue is controlled by eight muscles providing movements in all directions.
- Muscle tissue is 3 times more efficient at burning calories than fat. This is why possessing more muscle leads to burning more calories and makes you fitter.
- When you go to the gym working towards muscle strength, it is during sleep that muscles actually grow. When you are in deep sleep mode, all those hardworking muscles can finally relax, allowing more blood circulation. In addition, hormones are released during sleep that contributes to the repair and restoration of tissues crucial to new muscle tissue formation.
- Muscle memory is created by practicing an action over and over again. Our muscles fine-tune themselves, becoming more precise and exact in what they do. So practice is very important when learning a sport!!
- Cerebral palsy is a disorder that affects balance and motor functions, while muscular dystrophy is a genetic disease that damages muscle fibers.
- Amazingly a team of material scientists at the University of Texas at Dallas has discovered a new way to create powerful artificial muscles from low-cost, everyday fibers such as fishing lines and high-tension sewing threads that can lift 100 times more than normal muscles.
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